Vladscom

We're already in closed beta.

Despite the hate of some people, be happy about all the support that you get and remember that there are a lot more (want2be-)players who are spectating your progress quietly and are happy about what you do and what you invest into this project.
Am personally not posting much for example but I'm checking the status here pretty regularly since early 2016. By doing some Web-programming in my spare time I know how timeconsuming bug-searching can be.
Everytime I visit this forum or the devplatform I am happy to see that you're stil working on the game's development and hope that we all will be able to play together asap.

The aforementioned questions are important to have answered, and Kiwi has explained well how everyone in the team would answer them.
I would like to add to your second point that alongside the programming department having issues with setting up realistic deadlines for the work they are doing (taking personal time into account), this is not your average game development process you're looking at. What we are doing is reviving a pre-existing game through the same game files and code. Now, normally programming is already an unpredictable task, in which bugs are like hydras; one gets fixed, 2 more appear. In this project, it's like fighting an army of hydras while having no idea where they come from. We did not write the code that our server code needs to interact with, and we do not know the game's code or files inside-out, no matter how much we figure out ourselves. Not only does this make coding highly difficult, but also extremely unpredictable. Where you may be able to expose patterns in your own code's flaws, BattleForge is a labyrinth, and bugs may take minutes to fix, or may take days, weeks or months to fix. That is the margin of error we work with here, and it's not pretty.
Combine this with the fact that people have other duties, jobs, and lives to maintain, and there we get a massive uncertainty level for this project's level of progress. We do progress, but the speeds at which we do so varies depending on all these circumstances; it all adds up. You can't expect the team to work steadily and come across as little bugs as possible, you can't expect us to spend all the time we have on this project either. We're never getting paid for this, we don't always have time, and we're all not capable of working constantly. And as much as we all hate the wait, there is no other option than to progress in the way we currently do. If we were doing a complete remake of the game (which would definitely get the project killed), or if we would know every detail about the way the game was originally programmed, we would have a higher probability to make realistic deadlines, but the fact of the matter is that we don't. And with this absurdly high level of uncertainty, we stopped making deadlines, because we would only hurt the community by doing so for no good reason, and we do not want to disappoint you with yet another wrong prediction.

1. It's been underdevelopment for so long because we do this in our spare time not 24-7. We had to reverse engineer everything before we even started working on anything else, then we had to re-code from C# to C++ which took more time than we thought, we tried hosting the server on windows and that made too many problems do had to go back to Linux, there is more than just the simple "coding" that everyone seems to think is being needed. The code that EA left behind is a mess, as in it basically shouldn't even work but it does and the developers have to work it all out and change it into something they understand. If you see streams now you can see game play (Both PvE, PvP and rPvE games, Auction House, Mail, Direct Trade and Forge) so no, it's not just the Forge still. The only main issue is freezes, crashes and 12 player maps not being playable due to as I mentioned already the coding being such a huge mess.

2. Mistakes where made and the developers thought they could get it out in time but in the end couldn't because problems got in the way like they do in game development all the time, we apologized and that is why we no longer give set dates or times regarding Open Beta.
3. We get money from the project in a sense yes but it all goes towards server upkeep which we barely manage to reach (good servers aren't cheap) and we literally have barely any spare left over (the spare is being saved up for other things that we might need in the future like more servers etc). We also do not force people to donate nor do we expect people to donate. Considering all the staff have jobs I am not sure what we'd spend it on plus the amount we have left over wouldn't even buy a pizza. Keep in mind, some staff have even donated their money into this project themselves (Not that anyone seems to care of course). Finally I'd like to add we LEGALLY can't make any money from this game if we do we risk it being closed down and we don't want to risk that so why would we "spend" the money left over? It would mean a waste of these 3 years of blood, sweat and tears. I can tell you I have not been paid $0.01 since I became Moderator for this project, that's why I have two jobs just to get by.
4. Most people who think we're a scam have been around usually a month or even less and just assume that because they've been here 30 days or so and it hasn't been released that we're a scam. That or the fact when we do giveaways and they don't get access to Closed Beta they throw little tantrums and call us all names under the sun. They don't need to be here to see the streams or updates, it's all on our discord we have a stream channel and a channel for development updates (which is easy to see and have access to). If they don't read stuff before speaking not much we can do about that sadly.
I get why people are losing hope I truly do and I don't blame them, but if they where true fans would they give up? Take the World Cup for example, you want your team to do the best they can and sometimes they don't get to the finals but they at least tried right? and regardless of the outcome you're always there. Well we're trying our asses off, how do you think it makes the staff feel to see people dragging this project in the mud while we're here for free doing this for everyone asking for nothing in return. I can tell you it's pretty shit, we made mistakes I get that but we all do, we're human it's what we do right?
Anyway sorry about this huge wall of text, I hope I responded to all of your questions. If you want to ask anything else please send me a pm and I'll happily take the time to reply to you. So we can keep this thread on topic. Thanks.

Hello Skylords,
So now, let's talk about what we're going to do after all you will have to wait a bit longer, and please forgive us for this delay.

We have decided on a few things:
Everyone will receive 2 boosters once the game will be in open beta (you'll still get them even after a potential reset) From the 1st of February and until the Open beta, we'll invite some players everyday to the closed beta, to increase the amount of players, progressively (Giveaways will happen anytime during the day, morning, afternoon, evening ..) You'll be able from now to pre-download the client, and we finally after a lot of discussion decided to give the client here on the forum ourselves. Want to pre-download it ? You can use Mediafire or MEGA to download it! (You cannot start the game right now, you'll have to wait for open beta, and the release of our launcher to make it work.)  
 
INFORMATION : Giveaways for the Closed Beta will resume! These giveaways will mainly be held on Discord, but it may also happen on the forum, so keep following these two closely!
Discord : https://discord.gg/0y3WGMGXhd5q2lXA

With kind regards and apologies for any inconvenience caused,

Sincerely,
The Skylords Reborn Team